Astronaut
(translated by Katia Reitman)

1

- Well?
- Starting to defrost.
- Soon?
- Can’t rush it, he’ll crumble.
- Prognosis?
- 24 degrees
- Let's wait.
- Yes, let's wait.
- Well?
- 34 degrees.
- Shall we open?
- Might as well.
- He’s kind of pink.
- Yes, I also thought he’d be dried up.
- He looks alive.
- He is alive.
- I told you, he’s pink. How’s his breath, is he breathing?
- Yes, he is.
- Amazing.
- Hello.
- Hello.
- How are you feeling?
- Not bad.
- Do you remember your name?
- John Smith.
- Do you remember who you are?
- Astronaut. Garbage collector. I collect space debris.
- Where do you think you are?
- Apparently, at some military space base.
- Can you tell us what year it is?
- 1973. October of 1973.
- It's 2000 now.
- I have some information about terraforming the planet.
- What?
- Some information. About terraforming the planet. I have some information...
- What’s up with him?
- He's sleeping.
- What, just like that, suddenly fell asleep?
- After all, 27 years in space.
- Let me know when he wakes up.

2

- John Smith, born in 1941. Since childhood, he dreamed of becoming a pilot. After school, in 1960 he entered the Air Force Military College and graduated with honors. Vietnam. For participation in operational flights, he received the ‘Vietnam Service Medal’. Well, they gave it to everyone. Having flown 9,000 hours in 10 years, Major Smith applied for admission to the astronaut corps. Strategic Defense Initiative, the “Star Wars” program. Secret tests to destroy foreign spy satellites from space … space debris …
At the end of October 1973, John Smith went into orbit on a new ship, which was disguised as a satellite. On the 4th day of the flight, the spacecraft's maneuvering and attitude control systems failed … ship entered the zone of radiation belts … administration tried to recover the astronaut … preparation to launch another rocket … suddenly interruption in communication with Smith … strange radio noises near the Triangulum constellation… All employees, under the threat of immediate dismissal, are to forget about the space tragedy as if it never happened. The launch of Smith's spacecraft was marked as unsuccessful; the astronaut was written off as a result of a training flight accident. Wonderful. And 27 years of obscurity.
Call the doctor!

3

- What's the news on Smith?
- Confusing.
- What do you mean?
- I don't think it's the same Smith.
- In what sense?
- I have his medical records, and a lot of things do not match.
- What exactly?
- Well, look: old Smith had two broken ribs as a child. However, I don’t see any signs of fractures in this Smith.
- 27 years of obscurity, anyway. Something else?
- Yes. That Smith had dextrocardia (displacement of the heart to the right). This one has a normal heart. And some of the moles are missing.
- Interesting.
- His age as well. His body could be 32 years old, certainly not 59. As if these 27 years did not happen.
- I see.
- I would like to continue comparative research. But not only medical. Tests, IQ, and all that.
- Well, yes, of course, go with it.

4

- OK, let's get started.
- Orion’s Belt.
- Monatomic crystals.
- The eye of the Sahara.
- What’s that, the eye of the Sahara?
- An ancient portal, the eye of the Sahara. Astronauts now navigate by it, it is perfectly visible from the orbit.
- Why a portal?
- The Phaetonians landed through it.
- What Phaetonians?
- Astronauts from the planet Phaeton. Which was the fifth planet in the solar system, where the asteroid belt is located now.
- Where did you get this information from?
- Therefrom.
- The same there where you spent 27 years?
- I spent 9 days in flight. You can check the readings of the ship's trackers.
- Yes, we’ve checked.
- Then you know I'm not lying.
- Okay, go ahead.
- I have some information about the terraforming of the planet. Ours and others.
- Which ones?
- May I draw it?
- Yes, of course, you may, right here.
- Venus, Earth, Mars, Phaeton, Jupiter. It doesn't matter beyond that.
- What about Mercury?
- Look closely. Here, on Jupiter, an interstellar portal was founded. Are you familiar with the Jupiter's eye?
- Another eye?
- Well, yes, such a concentric structure is always, most likely, a portal. A runway for spaceships.
- A circular runway?
- Certainly. It's all about projection manifestability. Jupiter has a powerful magnetic field, and Jupiter itself, in fact, consists of layers of hydrogen in different physical forms — liquid, metallic, and solid, this helps creatures of various aspects adapt and select a suitable spacesuit. Then they are accommodated on the moons of Jupiter, like in hotels; there are about eighty of them, each one suitable for a different life form.
- Go on.
- The next one is Phaeton. The creatures there are the most advanced ones. They can take any form, an all-out variety. Well, you know, centaurs, mermaids, sphinxes, griffins, the whole mythology — they are all from there. Then there’s the Martians. Gigantic, pale, and very militarized. And here's the Earth — biocentric then, the whole planet as a single organism. Humans, animals, fish, dinosaurs — all share a collective unconscious, the soul of the planet. They don't build ships themselves, they’re good as they are.
- Excuse me, but when exactly is then?
- Approximately 12 thousand years ago.
- So, you’ve been to the past?
- The next one is Venus, the climate is good there, the rotation is normal, and there are many settlements in the stratosphere, on zeppelin islands, where it’s not so hot.
- What about Mercury?
- And then the Phaetons built the second sun. Do you remember the myth of Phaethon who lost control of the solar chariot? This is it. An artificial star to obtain unlimited manageable energy, the second sun. Well, they thought it manageable. Endless possibilities, interstellar contacts, and crowds of tourists from all over the universe. Many cycles of abundance. And then this ridiculous incident. I must say that the Phaetons are love itself. They care about every living creature. Then a ship from the Mintaka system, at the Orion's belt, flies through the interstellar portal. Something went wrong, they lost control and headed straight to the melting-hot surface of the artificial sun. The Phaetonians ran some estimations — the tourists stood no chance, and so they decided to nudge the star orbit, just a little. But there was little time for calculations. The tourists turned out fine after all. But after some significant number of cycles, one Phaetonian scientist suddenly calculated the price of that shift – irreversible consequences leading to the death of the planet. And so it began. The orbit was narrowing down, the sun was accelerating. Since there was still a lot of time, they adjusted what they could, made preparations, and started relocating en masse, each their own way – some escaped to the neighboring star systems, while those who loved their homeland, stayed. And all their hope was for the Earth, nowhere else could they survive.
- Yes, it all sounds very dramatic.
- After that the artificial sun crashed into Phaeton, its fragments scattered – that’s an asteroid belt now. And its dense, metallic core flew to the center, towards the real Sun. When the Phaeton core passed Mars, its atmosphere was wiped clean off. When it passed the Earth, it dislocated its second moon from its orbit, the moon’s fragments collided with the Earth, shifted the axis of rotation, and made the Earth spin faster. A wave passed across the entire planet, and the great flood began, everything sank into clayed silt several meters deep, at best, and a lot of lands simply went underwater: Atlantis, Hyperborea, most of what was then Japan, even Lake Titicaca appeared because of that.
- Well, wait, how did it happen? It's three thousand meters above sea level!
- Yes, and the whole port city ended up at its bottom. That’s why only those who were high in the mountains survived. Why do you think the sites of the ancients are found in caves? Archaic humans? It was the only place to hide after the flood — everything else was buried under water and mud. Why was the fire produced by friction and a spark? Well, try to find a power socket when everything is destroyed! And even if you knew what electricity is, how could you build a power plant from scratch, out of thin air? Many became wild, most of them. Only fairy tales were told about a flying carpet, a navigator yarn, and a mirror that shows a person in a distant land. How to actually do all this, no one remembered. In addition, the climate began to change.
- Dinosaurs became extinct...
- That’s true. The next one on the path of the hot core was Venus — it was hit hard and began to rotate in the opposite direction, clockwise. They had no chance at all, all the chemical elements switched places. And finally, near the Sun the core of Phaeton slowed down — and it became Mercury, a solid core, almost no surface to this day.
- And why haven’t we gone extinct here yet, along with the dinosaurs?
- When everything calmed enough, the migrants to Earth began to settle down as best as they could. The Phaetonians did not last long, the earthly atmosphere preventing them from changing their self-forms, they pined away slowly, and faded into folklore. They told and passed down what they had time for. Meanwhile, the Martians flourished on Earth — they introduced the ideas of power and hierarchy to earthlings, ideas that some are gods, and some are monkeys, and they were very successful in this. Venusians settled in the warmest places. Rich people arrived from there, with hardly any skills, and they regressed completely by the time they figured out how to get food. And then everyone intermingled with each other, and this intermingling still goes on.
- Why do we need this information?

5

- What do you think of this story?
- It’s not entirely senseless.
- Let's get serious. What are the survey results?
- If you do not take into account the theory that we’ve heard, then Smith's mental state is quite stable. He is calm, balanced, and quite rational. Moreover, serious abilities in mathematics and logic were revealed, which the former Smith did not have. He easily calculates cube roots of eight-digit numbers. And his knowledge of physics and archeology is at least up to date. I think that he could not have known all this in 1973. I keep insisting that this is a different Smith.
- What if he's just...improved? We do not know what kind of radiation was it, do we?
- Radiation does not convey specific data. And his physical differences are not always improvements.
- Such as?
- Dextrocardia (displacement of the heart to the right) is no better than sinistrocardia (displacement of the heart to the left). Differences in fingerprints are also neutral.
- And what can this tell us?
- For example, that he is a clone.
- Is cloning even legal here?
- Here?
- If we imagine that Smith is really a clone sent to us by aliens — if that is the option you’re considering — then why is he telling us all this? Information from twelve thousand years ago does not give us anything. Or it’s just a distraction, and their goals are, in fact, quite different.
- Well, let's ask him right now about those goals.
- Let's do it.

6

- He’s sleeping. Smith! Do you hear us?
- Smith, why are you here? Why are you back?
- The mission was designed to last 9 days.
- But you know that you were gone for 27 years?
- But you know that just 9 days have passed for me? Time on earth and in space does not flow evenly. Moments there, centuries here.
- You got a bit too far.
- Yes, a bit too far. Or a bit too long ago. The matter is just a materialized time. Just a different physical form.
- Elaborate.
- Imagine a tree. A sprout appears from a small seed, grows stronger, develops, and the leaves appear. And at any moment you can look at this tree — and see how it developed, its whole life at once. This is time taken form.
- What does this have to do with your trip?
- What we see is a description of what happened. And the key to the future.
- Are you warning us?
- They. Remind.
- About what?
- About an absurd accident. About the grandeur of the unpredictable.
- And what should be done?
- Nothing. Better to do nothing at all.
- And this is the purpose of your mission? Nonsense.
- You must understand no one sent me, I just got into a random stream.
- And what about your logbook? 27 pages out of 50 are filled with some symbols. What language is this? What does it say? To whom?
- I think, having passed the portal, I just possessed that language. Nothing has changed for me. And it describes the details of the events.
- Can you read it?
- I'll try.
- No, I don't understand. I can't read it.
- Then give it back.
- Show it to the archaeologists.
- We’ve shown. They don't understand anything as well.
- You see, all knowledge is in us already. We just don't want to remember.
- Agree. For example, all cultures have references to the flood. They are different but appear everywhere. Vimanas, gods from heaven, flying carpets, genies — it all happened. As well as nuclear explosions, falling celestial bodies, changes in magnetic fields — all this happened so many times. Essentially, nothing changes. The form of manifestation called "life" and "being" is characterized by chaos and repetition at the same time. A sort of intrusive delirium.
- Are there any other forms of existence?
- At least non-existence. And some others that are difficult for us to understand.
- Have you met them?
- Even if you met them, you did not notice.

7

- I do not understand anything. How, why, what for, whom to?
- What do you think, doctor, why did they write all this on stones at all? Try to imagine a person nowadays who carves anything on a stone. Unless, of course, it's a tombstone. Did they really think about future generations? What if it is something very simple, newspapers, for example?
- Are these printing forms?
- Yes. But, truth be told, letterpress printing had not yet been invented.
- Yes, as well as power tools and drills. How did they make these holes and cuts in multi-ton blocks?
- And this, what is it then?
- Tags for star observers.
- Doctor, I see you have an explanation for everything. Maybe you’ve space-traveled someplace too? Those are very convenient theories — messages to future generations, warnings, and observers. If someone is watching someone, then someone is also watching this someone, and so on ad infinitum. The only thought that Smith is trying to convey to us is that everything is chaotic and meaningless. Like a tree that grows under the influence of a thousand factors, but has nothing to do with these factors.
- You deny the highest divine intelligence?
- Doctor, is that you? Being is God. But there is no intelligence there.
- Yes! How? He disappeared. 24/7 video surveillance, he was sleeping and then just vanished. Yes, I’ll come at once. Let's go and see, doctor.

8

- There is no one.
- It looks like some kind of hide-and-seek game. Maybe we should look behind the curtain?
- Or under the table.
- Look, doctor. It looks like some kind of coordinates.
- Something to keep us busy in the coming years.

9

- Yes, hello!
- Doctor, have you ever thought about the way the ancients imagined the world?
- Are you talking about the flat Earth? You must have access to space archives, don’t you? Do you seriously believe this drivel?
- Yes, I do. With a caveat. Notions on the flat Earth are associated not with the planet, but with the entire solar system. After all, the orbits of the planets lie in the same plane. Remember the Indian Puranas: there are nine continents interspersed with rings of emptiness, in the middle is the golden shining mountain Meru, and around it is a ring of rocks. Finally, there is the sun, nine planets, and around them the Kuiper Belt. And everything floats in their ocean of milk, or rather, in one part of it. An ocean of milk, can you imagine? Even the name has been preserved. On a related note, our galaxy is also a plane, we only get the edge view of the Milky Way.
- Does that mean it's all about interpretation?
- Or about the perspective. It seems that the ancients knew as much as we do. Judging by our findings, much more, even. There is a feeling that humanity is regressing, and losing more knowledge than it gains.
- Yes, but their civilization was destroyed. It shows that they did something wrong. And we still have a chance to go through this story differently. Or at the very least turn off to a concealed sideroad.
- Yes, doctor, you are still a humanist. Have you lost faith in man?
- Have you already heard about the boy who found the ancient city in the jungle?
- Not yet, tell me!
- Just listen — he juxtaposed a map of the Mayan settlements with a map of the constellations and discovered the missing stars. He pointed out a possible location on satellite images, and it seems to be another pyramid.
- What about the scientists?
- They deny everything, as usual. And we can't get there and verify it yet. All routes are classified.
- It means that someone knows something after all. Are the coordinates on our list?
- Yes.
- Well, let's look for the concealed sideroad.